1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of event management and more particularly to managing application state changes among disparate applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional disparate applications operate autonomously without regard to the operation of other applications coexisting in the same computing network. Consequently, where state changes within one application affect the operation of other applications, an artificial adaptation between the applications must be created to address such state changes. In the context of event relationship networks and network and enterprise management tools, adapters have been developed to capture event occurrences in one disparate application for use in acting upon a second disparate application.
Within event relationship networks, event management consoles have become commonplace through which events detected in one application can be acted upon in other, disparate applications. Typically, once captured through a parsing of log files for an application, an event can be processed in the event management console which can alert a systems administrator to the occurrence of the event. Based upon an evaluation of the event, an administrator can physically effectuate an action within one or more disparate applications in response to the event. Nevertheless, to effectively capture every event of relevance, an adapter must be written requiring substantial computer software development resources.
A framework for adapting network device events to other disparate devices previously had been proposed in the seminal paper, David Thoenen, Jim Riosa and Joseph L. Hellerstein, Event Relationship Networks: A Framework for Action Oriented Analysis in Event Management, in IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (Sep. 28, 2000)(hereinafter “Framework”). The Framework teaches an action oriented analysis in which the sources of events are identified and the identified events are inventoried to determine their meaning in the context in which the events were generated. Roles are assigned to the events depending upon the context and correlation rules are developed that both identify event roles and also initiate appropriate device actions responsive to the events.
Notably, while the Framework had been proposed primarily in respect to the management of network device events, the principal of the Framework—the generation of correlation rules for initiating appropriate actions in response to identifiable events—can have broad application. Nevertheless, the Framework lacks implementation details sufficient to enable any such broad application. In particular, the Framework does not address the specific problem of events arising among interdependent but de-coupled and disparate applications.
Presently, many commercial network management product offerings utilize advanced portal and portlet technology for providing a presentation layer to network management logic. As an example, the IBM Integrated Solutions Console™ is a portal based user interface included as a supporting component of the Tivoli Management Portal™ manufactured by the International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., United States. Within the portal, different panes in a single window can provide for simple tree navigation between work pages, an event viewer, a portfolio portlet which allows administrators to launch new applications within the work page, and a resource health model.
Notably, within the portal view, different portlet views can be assigned to different disparate applications. Through a corresponding portlet, an application can be centrally managed, just as in the case of remotely disposed devices in a conventional network management tool. Nevertheless, to coordinate a response to an event arising in a given application viewed through the portal, a mixture of manual and programmatic actions will be required. First, an adapter must be developed to identify and present the occurrence of an event in one application through the portal. Subsequently, an administrator must manually intervene to effectuate a corresponding action in the disparate application.